Ericsson set to lay off thousands of workers over summer – report

Thousands more to follow as company attempts to make up £850m shortage

Swedish telecommunications business Ericsson is reportedly set to rid itself of up to 4,000 employees this summer, and potentially thousands more thereafter.

Citing anonymous sources, Svenska Dagbladet (SVD) reported that 3,000-4,000 Ericsson workers were going to go this summer, with thousands more following them as the struggling company tries to make cost savings of around £850m.

Ericsson told The Register: "As you know [we] do not comment on rumors and speculations," but added that, "as announced on April 21, we are implementing structural changes to further accelerate strategy execution and drive efficiency and growth even harder across the company."

Slowing markets have reportedly spurred the "efficiencies", with sales expectations falling way short in April. The business told us it "announced a cost and efficiency program in 2014 with the aim to achieve net annual cost savings of SEK 9bn during 2017."

"This program is on track," they added, "but more remains to be done before the program is completed."

"In addition, in our report for Q1 we stated that we had begun taking additional measures beyond the SEK 9bn cost and efficiency program," they added. "Hence, we are adapting our operations to current mobile broadband project volumes, which primarily impacts service delivery." ®